Happy Holidays! I hope that everyone has a wonderful holiday season. Thank you so much for all of your continued support in 1-Bu.

Please keep in mind that this Friday, December 23rd, is a 12:45pm dismissal day. The class parents will be coming in celebrate with a winter party that day, so there is no need for you to pack a snack (unless, of course, you feel that your child may not like what the class parents are offering).

Reading : Thank you for your help with the first week of reading homework last week. Please let me know if you have any questions. Your child should be the one filling out the reading log (except for the adults' initials). Also, please remind your child to underline the title of the book when he/she records it.

Last week we started talking about fluency, or 'reading like a story-teller,' as we like to call it in school. We'll continue doing that this week. We're learning all about how to use make our reading smooth, using different voices, and paying attention to punctuation.

Writing : By the end of this week, we'll be publishing our small moment pieces. We got a treat last week, as Ms. Holmes' second grade class visited to share their small moment writing pieces with us. (There are pictures of 1-Bu students listening to 2-Ho students' writing pieces at the bottom of this post.) Hopefully we paid attention to some of the things the second graders did, and we can implement them in our own writing.

Math : The students are really enjoying our measuring unit. This week, we're going to continue practice measuring in inches and learn how (and when) to use tape measures.

Odds and Ends : Officer Marc stopped by on Monday to show us the inside of his police car and take picture of each student with his car. The students really enjoyed learning about all of the tools inside a police car.

If you have any fun, patterned paper, please send it to school with your child on Monday or Tuesday. We will be using it to make collages. (We learned about this method of illustration in a book last week and the students want to try it out themselves.)

Also, thank you for sending in all of those paper towel rolls for our math scrolls we'll be doing in January. We've got enough now!

Here are some pictures of 1-Bu learning about Officer Marc's police car and our visit from 2-Ho: